So many of you might be wondering where I have been the last few months. Well, it’s been a rough time since the car accident. I struggled since the beginning of the year with my arm injury, but it just progressively got worse. I was in and out of braces, casts, and physical therapy and in quite a bit of pain. I lost my ability to do knitting, crocheting, jewelry making, or any type of creating with my hands, as my dominate arm was affected. I had to make the choice to get surgery to repair the damage and am finally starting to get better. I hope to get back to doing what I love now that I am healing. I still have a road of recovery in front of me but having the use of my arm again is making me hopeful.

Here is another chunky infinity scarf that I created for a friend about a month or so ago. It took me awhile to finish and post this due to the injuries to my arm and wrist. I’ll be so happy when I am healed and can finally get back to my regular schedule of creating again. Until then, I am going to keep this brief and let the pictures of this beautiful piece do the talking for me.

I have as you can see, and it isn’t pretty. In fact, it can ruin a bunch of nicely organized seed beads by mixing them all up into a huge mess that even the most patient person couldn’t ever sort through. The trick to avoiding this is getting the right container to store your beads (especially small items like seed beads) and findings.

Don’ts for Bead Storage

1. You want to avoid containers that do not have grooves in the lid for each individual compartments that help to keep your beads and other items in their specific areas. An example of one to avoid is shown below:

Avoid containers like this with lids that do NOT have grooves specifically for your compartments.

The one shown below is better because it has the grooves in the lid to help keep your items in their compartments.

Containers with grooved lids are good for large-medium sized findings & beads. NOT recommended for smaller/seed beads or findings though.

Do’s for Bead Storage

Now, even the ones with the grooves (shown above) aren’t fail safe from the mixed up bead disaster as beads still might migrate if the container is shifted around a lot. Also, if you happen to drop the container, all of your items will fall out and mix together, which is a complete nightmare. So I only recommend using the above type of container for large to medium sized findings and beads.

1. For your smaller beads, seed beads, and small findings, I recommend using either a pill case that has separate compartments, like what is shown below:

2. Or, even better yet, some craft stores, like Michaels and Hobby Lobby, sell these awesome storage containers that have separate, lockable compartments. The one pictured below that I recommend is called CraftMates Lockables 2XL. These are great because their design practically eliminates the issue of beads/findings migrating to other compartments as everything is separated and opens individually. If you’re working and only have one compartment open and dump these by accident, you only have to worry about cleaning up and re-organizing one compartment of beads, which is no big deal when in comparison to a whole container of different ones all mixed together.

The locking feature on these also works VERY well. I was in a car wreck in January and had these inside my craft bag that was in my car at the time of the accident. Everything in my car was knocked out of place (including myself), but these stayed locked and in tact.

3. Another thing that’s important to look for with bead storage are containers that are stackable for easy storage on shelves, in drawers, or in your craft bag. Again, I recommend CraftMates Lockables as they nest together very nicely and are a nice size that fits well in a number of places (including craft bags).

4. One other thing that I can recommend for better bead storage, is to organize your beads by color (for instance, you might want to organize your beads like I did by the colors in the spectrum or color wheel). This way, you can see all of the colors of beads that you have and also be able to more easily plan out the colors in your designs.

Don’t they look so pretty all neat and organized like this? Makes me want to create!

I hope you found this post helpful in getting your beads and findings organized!

-Dana

Please note that I did not get paid/compensated by the company mentioned with money or products to write this post. All items have been purchased with my own money. All view points and opinions expressed in this post are purely my own based off of my experiences. I enjoy writing and sharing these posts with my readers in hopes that this information is helpful to others out there.

I recently completed another chunky infinity scarf for a friend using the pattern from this post. My friend wanted one that was grey and teal, so I decided to use grey as the base color with the super bulky weight Thick & Quick and found a pretty teal worsted weight yarn as an accent to carry along with it.

Here are the details for the materials that I used for this particular scarf:

The color of the Patons Classic Wool Worsted in Jade Heather was really hard to capture with my camera. I think it is much prettier in person. This yarn is really a chameleon yarn as it can look blue or green depending on the light or what color it is paired with. The hubbers liked the color so much that I might have to make him a hat with it.

I wanted to make a hat to go with the chunky infinity scarf that I made a few weeks ago, so I knit up one of my favorite patterns, the Cordova knit hat by designer Jen LaCroix. I used one skein of Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Oatmeal (123) and followed the directions exactly. This is a quick knit that I was able to finish over two days during holiday break, so if you want instant gratification with a project and need a hat for the Winter or a quick gift, I highly recommend this pattern.

Here are some pictures of my finished piece.

Finished hat with chunky infinity scarf

The slouchiness of this hat is just perfect.

Have you knit up any slouchy hats lately? If so, do you have any favorite patterns to share? If so, please comment below. I’d love to check out what others recommend.

I just wanted to make a quick post to let everyone know that my blogging has gone quiet over the last week because I am currently recovering from a car wreck. I hope to be better as soon as I can as I really miss creating and blogging about what I love. In the meantime, I have been getting lots of TLC from some amazing caretakers while resting and healing:

My kitty caretakers

While I am resting, I have been catching up on some reading and Pinterest, so check out my Twitter and Pinterest feeds for all the cool little tidbits that I find as I like to share on those outlets.

If you follow my Twitter account @danameyerdesign, you know that I had recently purchased 15 sets of carbonized patina bamboo DPNs (double pointed needles) in sizes 0 through 15 on eBay (shown below) to work on a recent project and desperately needed a nice organizer to store all of them.

That’s a lot of DPNs!

I’m a huge fan of Etsy, so I headed on over there to look for a DPN organizer. I browsed for awhile and couldn’t find anything that was big enough without breaking the bank (some were over $75) that was also pretty until I stumbled upon the most beautiful and affordable DPN organizers made by LunaStitch. The one I fell in love with and purchased is shown here and in the images below.

The colors and design are just so striking and vibrant- even nicer than the pictures show.

I really like how it can be used as both a wallet and a roll depending on how you like to store your needles in your project bag or elsewhere. The last two images above show examples of this.

What’s also great about this organizer is that there was enough room left over to store all of my other metal & bamboo DPNs and cable needles as well. (This baby has 28 pockets!) So, now all of my DPNs have a home all in one place and I couldn’t be happier!

I also wanted to share this with my readers as this was a great experience with this Etsy seller. I bought this on Sunday, which I might add was right before a big holiday (New Years)and received it promptly Wednesday morning. I will certainly keep this seller on my list of favorites and recommend this seller to others.

Thanks for reading!

Please note that I did not get paid/compensated by the Etsy artist mentioned with money or products to write this post. All view points and opinions expressed in this post are purely my own based off of my experiences. I enjoy writing and sharing these posts with my readers in hopes that this information is helpful to others out there.

I completed a pretty nifty infinity scarf for myself over holiday break and wanted to share. I used the stitch pattern called the Pavement Infinity Scarf, which is found here. Please note that I used a few different materials than what the pattern called for. Here are the details:

I used a much bigger hook (US S) for the project as I crochet tighter and also wanted a much loser fabric for my scarf. I also used more yarn and choose to carry a medium weight yarn (Vanna’s Choice) along with the Thick & Quick to get a multicolored and chunkier look to the piece.

Also, when working through the pattern, I did come across one issue in the following part shown in bold:

Foundation Row: In the 4th chain from the hook, work dc, ch 1, dc in the same ch. *Skip two chains and then in the next ch, work dc, ch 1, dc in the same ch. Repeat 3 more times from * to end, then in the last ch, work 1 dc, ch 1, 1 dc in the same ch.

When I worked this part in the last chain (ch), it didn’t look right as too much was being worked into that last chain, so I worked just 1 dc in that last chain stitch and the foundation row worked out much better. So, with this fix, the pattern looks as follows:

Foundation Row: In the 4th chain from the hook, work dc, ch 1, dc in the same ch. *Skip two chains and then in the next ch, work dc, ch 1, dc in the same ch. Repeat 3 more times from * to end, then in the last ch, work 1 dc.

Then, I continued on with Row 1 of the pattern. I worked until my scarf was 80 inches long as I wanted one that I could wrap around my neck and shoulders a few times. It also is wide enough that I can pull it up and wear it as a hood when it is wrapped up tightly around my neck.

Here is how my scarf turned out:

It is quite a lovely pattern that works up very quickly and can be worn in so many different ways. I have worn it a lot since finishing and have gotten numerous compliments. I encourage everyone to check out the pattern designer’s website and give the pattern a try.